Re: Structured Headers: URI type (#782)

[Julian Reschke <[e-mail]>]

On 02.05.2019 07:45, Mark Nottingham wrote:
> Could you explain why it's compelling?
>
> It's already possible to map a link header to the existing data structures (there are a couple of ways you'd do it).  It's true that the syntax wouldn't be identical to a Link header, but that hasn't been a goal for other parts of SH; in this sort of situation, we've assumed that some mapping function would be necessary (e.g., negotiating to send the new header as SH-Link, or some other mechanism).

I understand it was not a goal, but that doesn't mean it wouldn't be
nice to get to that as closely as possible...

> I'd be much more supportive of doing a URI type if we could get agreement for *and* implementation of a common data model for URIs in SH. However, it appears that there's disagreement about that; browser folks want to reuse the WHATWG URI specification (which is sensible, from their viewpoint), whereas others don't like that spec. Exposing it as just a string doesn't seem to add much at all.

It indeed just adds a new syntax (no processing model is needed, true).
For URIs, it's kind of nice as it uses a delimiter that can't be used in
URIs anyway.

> We could talk about this a lot more, but I suspect it would take at least a few months to conclude the discussion. I'd rather ship the spec; if we can agree on a new type down the road, we can always add it with an update.

That is true, but then updating both spec and implementations is always
more work then including things from the start. It's a trade-off.

 From a practical point of view, would you expect the spec to be
replaced by a new one, or should there be an extension point/hook so a
delta spec can be written?

Best regards, Julian